Working to solve roaming dog challenges through the Clinton Global Initiative

A pack of roaming dogs can strike fear into any community, often driving people to try extremely inhumane measures such as beating and poisoning to ‘fix’ the problem. However, these quick ‘fixes’ do little to really solve the problem.

Today at the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) forum in New York, the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) announced a new commitment to global change that will help communities develop solutions to roaming dog situations that can benefit both animals and people for the long term.

IFAW’s “Humane Communities: Security, Health and Animal Welfare Commitment” establishes a framework to develop plans for managing dog populations humanely and sustainably in six Bosnian communities and one community in Chile.

We are especially excited about this announcement because it establishes a new approach in which the human development community shares our goals – opening up a new world of opportunity and resources to address an age-old animal welfare and community safety issues.

We are optimistic that the opportunity to form connections with other high-profile organizations at CGI will enable us to expand this approach into other regions.

We are already partnering with the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) on this project. The UNDP identified roaming dogs as a critical human security issue through its Citizens Security Forums in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and when they sought a solution they realised that IFAW’s community-based approach was a compatible methodology that empowers communities to map their own humane solutions for long-term change.

In Chile, where the program has already begun, early indicators are positive, with a high-level of engagement from participants who were initially reluctant. In Bosnia, we have requests for training from more communities than our current budget and staff capacity allow us to fulfill.

Too often, we have seen attempts to solve dog population problems fail, because they were undertaken by outsiders, or because the community became reliant on external support or someone else’s idea of a solution.

Through this new methodology, enhanced by partnerships from the development community who have been struggling with similar issues for years, we are combining the best learning from both worlds to create sustainable, long-term solutions to the issues of roaming dogs, creating more humane communities for animals and people.